Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Friday, May 2, 2014

Israel and the War of Ideas

In an article
that was published by Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth (“A Light Intifada” by
Alex Fishman) on the 1st of May it was written that the Palestinian Authority
government is following a new aggressive strategy of a “light Intifada”: a
series of graduated steps the intent of which is to keep the pressure on Israel
while for now it refrains from hard violence. To paraphrase Fishman, the PA
strategy is to hold talks as if there is no “Light Intifada” and to conduct a “Light
Intifada” as if there are no talks.Everything happens according to Palestinians’ terms. The reconciliation
with Hamas, the delegitimization campaign against Israel,
participation in various international organizations, popular resistance
against Israel;
these are all tactics in the new Intifada. And carrots? Abu Mazen’s statement
about the Holocaust and the declaration that the unity government will act in
the spirit of the PA (a two faced ‘concession’ if there ever was one) are all
part of the new/old war being waged against us.

Alex Fishman
concludes that Israel
faces this onslaught in a confused and passive state.

Herein is Israel’s greatest
challenge. When Israel
unilaterally withdrew from Gaza
in 2005 it was in pursuance of a proactive strategy. Israel
disengaged from a hostile neighbor, building a security fence decreased the
security threat that Gaza posed to its soldiers and
in an increasingly antagonistic diplomatic environment Israel demonstrated a second time that strategic
depth (the first was when Israel
returned Sinai to Egypt)
was less important than normalizing its relationship with its Arab neighbors.

How successful
this strategy was may be open to debate but in the aftermath of its perceived
failure Israel’s
actions have been primarily reactive.And that is diplomatically damaging to Israel.If the purpose of Jewish self-determination
(or independence) is to reassert a positive Jewish identity then the diplomatic
battle being waged across the globe against Israel impacts not just Israel but
all of its supporters.

The negotiations
for a two state solution to the Israel
– Palestine
conflict have ground to a halt.Mutual
recriminations beset the principal protagonists. Each one asserts the claim
that the other is one hundred percent to blame for obstructing the path to a
credible solution. Courage is a pivotal requirement for both sides and peace
will not be achievable without it. But what drives the breakdown in negotiating
resolution is incitement – it demonstrates a lack of imagination – it shows a failure
of nerve.

Israel is an island of ordered chaos in an ocean of instability. It must
make allowances for its environment if it is to survive the violent storms that
batter its defenses. That can only happen if it pays close attention to its
neighbors.

For instance: Eighty
three per cent of Egyptian women have experienced sexual harassment, 98% of
foreign female visitors have suffered a worse fate if, they stupidly assume a
right to appear in public. In Tahrir Square, in January 2011, after the
revolution that brought Morsi to power (and before his subsequent overthrow),
organized rape of women became common place and this was justified through the
accusation that the ‘accused’ women were Coptic Christians, or Foreigners.Egypt is the land of the pharaohs
and the pyramids.It also gave the world
the Muslim Brotherhood, the institution that has spread like a contagion across
the globe. It is a cross between the institution of the Inquisition and the
Knights Templar.

Egypt is a deeply misogynistic and racist society.In a country without Jews to blame,
Christianity is given as the reason for any failures that cannot be placed on
the Zionists. Churches are burned to the ground, libraries and ancient artifacts
are destroyed because they are a blemish on the perfect Islamic landscape.

It could as easily
be reminiscent of Israel’s
experience of the Palestinians.

The Arab
Aghlabid regime was the first, in history, to force Jews to wear the Star of
David as a visible means of identification, over eleven-hundred years ago (in
the 9th Century AD/CE).President Mahmoud
Abbas was awarded his doctorate for writing a thesis that questioned the extent
of the Shoah and by associating Zionism with Nazism.Mahmoud Abbas justified his bigotry with
reference to the ongoing state of war between Jews and Muslims but as recently
as 2013 he reaffirmed the veracity of his thesis and he sated that there was so
much more he could write on the subject of collusion.

Israel’s critics may declare that it is counterproductive to obsess over the
past but only a fool fails to internalise how earlier periods are viewed, from
the battlements of history.

Since the
election of Mahmoud Abbas to the office of President on January 15, 2005 corruption
has been the only true growth industry in the PA, restricted only by the uncritical
largess of donor nations. Palestinian society has been fed an unrestricted
diet of incitement against Israel’s
Jewish population while the PA only ever promotes its maximalist demands.Mr. Abbas tells the world that his country
will be Judenrein (Clean of Jews).At
the end of July 2013 he reiterated this point (according to Reuters) in a
briefing he gave to (mostly) Egyptian journalists.

Such tactics are
not intended to encourage trust or good faith negotiations. Fatah honored its jailed
leader, Marwan Barghouti because “he had killed 61 Zionists”.Quite simply a Zionist is any person of any
faith who believes that Jews have a right to self-determination.If an emphasis is placed on the man as
murderer rather than any other quality he may possess then there is a
difference between the General (who may have killed many more people) and the
guerrilla leader who washes his hands in the blood of his victims.Glorifying killers sends out a message.A military leader can sue for peace but a
killer, recognising the value of violence only, knows only how to celebrate the
murders he or she has committed for the cause.It is not a word game but a philosophical construct, a state of mind.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but with words
begin the slaughter. It has always been so.

By demonising
Israelis and portraying them as killers, thieves and liars, Abbas is using the
language of the Koran and utilising religious dogma to entrench a mindset of
war among his people. But equally he supports a creed that explains the
inherent superiority of the Arab nation over “the other” which creates an
expectation that the faithful will inevitably triumph over their enemy.No
room exists for compromise or co-existence.

“Peace is not an
absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence,
confidence, justice.”Baruch Spinoza, (Theological-Political
treatise 1670)

In the past,
wars were usually fought between States of equal strength. Most contemporary
conflicts are between asymmetric forces with the weaker side using non-state
players (terrorists/freedom fighters) to rebalance the diplomatic and military
equation.If, to paraphrase Carl von
Clausewitz, war is diplomacy by other means, then the reverse can also apply
(as Alex Fishman demonstrated).

If that is the
case it follows that Israel
is to blame for the poor state of
negotiations.And the reason is that in
the war of words it has allowed itself to appear passive; it has permitted the
Palestinian negotiators to define the debate.Many commentators remind us that
nations make peace with their enemies.And
this argument has once more been brought into focus with the reported
reconciliation between HAMAS and the Palestinian Authority.But in order for warring nations to negotiate
towards peace two things must happen. First, both sides must make compromises.
Second, the dominant player must impose their will on the negotiations. Israel has not
done this.It has failed to view a
propaganda war as equal to a hot war.

Israel was not founded in sin. Its birth was a triumph of the downtrodden
against an Arab enemy that was taught to honour violence, to seek out conquest and
to belittle the aspirations of the minority within its borders (unless as an
expedient, sharing power furthers the aims of the Arab ruler).But we never hear this in any debate with our
opponents.

In contrast to
Pan-Arab nationalism, Turkish neo-Ottomanism and Iranian theocratic imperialism
Zionism demands equality as a birthright for all the states inhabitants.

In an article
that appeared in Ynet on the 1st of May Bibi Netanyahu announced his intention
to enshrine, by formal legislation, the status of the State of Israel as a
nation-state of the Jewish people. As a cultural cornerstone of the state it
makes it clear to Israel’s
neighbours that any successful negotiation between Israel
and Palestine will
be dependent on maintaining the centrality of a Jewish national character within
the State of Israel.“A new Basic Law
declaring Israel
a Jewish state would largely be symbolic, an Israeli official said."It is a declaration to show that this
is part of our national ethos."”

There should be
no conflict between Jewish and democratic values.Treating the stranger amongst us as equal to
us is a key plank of Jewish religious (and Jewish secular) dogma, even if,
within the heat of building the nation, there are far too many people who appear
to have forgotten this crucial biblical injunction.

Zionism created a
Utopian vision which was later expressed in Israel’s
Declaration of Independence and which in turn forms the inspiration for Israel’s Basic (constitutional)
laws.It is worthwhile to repeat part
of that founding Declaration:

“The State of
Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets
of Israel;
it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its
inhabitants irrespective of religion race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of
religion, conscience, language, education and culture…”

In Israel,
equality exists in law.Like elsewhere within
the non-Muslim world it remains an aspiration that must guide its legislators
towards the ethical development of the state.

Margaret
Nevinson, wife of the British artist Richard Nevinson, writing in 1926 about
the aftershocks from World War One stated the everywhere there is “callousness produced
by the long spectacle of pain and suffering.” If it exists here too, perhaps it is because we
can no longer see an end to our conflict with our enemy.If
only to be in a position to make concessions, Israel has to negotiate from
strength, not weakness.Because the
nations of the world have learned to ignore the history of the conflict, Israel, when
confronted with a war of ideas appears to be weak and therefore, guilty as
charged.In order to win the peace every
opportunity must be made for Israel’s
truths to be repeated. It must demonstrate that the Arab world and as part of
the Arab World, the Palestinian Authority has no interest in real peace, no
interest in conflict resolution, and no interest in religious
reconciliation.Only then will we make
progress towards resolution.

For those who
think that the war is lost, "All truth passes through three stages. First,
it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as
being self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

2 comments:

Shabbat Shalom my friend.I read your above post and agree with most of what is written.

You also write:

"In order to win the peace every opportunity must be made for Israel’s truths to be repeated. It must demonstrate that the Arab world and as part of the Arab World, the Palestinian Authority has no interest in real peace, no interest in conflict resolution, and no interest in religious reconciliation."

Many people do that by using the Social Networks. There are also many organizations like: CIF Watch, Media Watch, CAMERA, Honest-reporting, PMW and UN Watch who are confronting the Western media on a daily basis to correct the bias published by these institutions.

What we do lack, and you are quite right in a concentrated governmental effort and budget to promote the State of Israel and effective law-fare with the Arab world and the West.

Benjamin Nethanyahu of all prime-ministers should have realized the importance of the strategic implications of Israel's demonization by the Arabs and their open law-fare against the State of Israel.

What do you think that we can do? Frankly speaking our power is limited to the Social Networks. It does not go further than that.

I think that he is frightened to open Pandora's Box... The funds are there as well as the people who are committed to fighting the skirmishes as well as the larger battles. The resources exist. The tactics the enemy use we should also use. But stating that we are fighting a war that is both religious and about conquest opens up questions that too many people do not want to face. Simply stated there are 1,500 million Muslims and 15 million Jews - who do you support - economically & politically we are minnows. All of the racist and antisemitic propaganda cannot hide this one bottom line. If there is a conspiracy amongst the millions of pages of garbage and hate written over the centuries it is that the true conspiracy involves those who have the most power and have no interest in losing it. The missionary faiths have no reason to want to share power with minnows but will happily use them as their sacrifice.